Pavlova

Adding an acid such as cream of tartar (a dry acid) or vinegar will help give the meringue structure. You can use either. If you are using cream of tartar, mix it in with the egg whites from the beginning. If you are using vinegar, add it with the vanilla extract later in the process.

Method

1 Prep baking sheet, preheat oven: Place rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 275°. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.

Pour the vanilla extract and vinegar (if using) into a small cup. Stir the cornstarch into the sugar in a small bowl.

2 Whip egg whites, cream of tartar (if using), salt, to soft peaks: In a large bowl of a heavy-duty mixer, fitted with whisk attachment, whip the egg whites, cream of tartar (if using) and salt, starting on low, increasing incrementally to medium speed until soft peaks/trails start to become visible, and the egg white bubbles are very small and uniform, approximately 2 to 3 minutes.

A few minutes after these dry ingredients are added, slowly pour in the vanilla and vinegar (if you didn't use cream of tartar.)

Increase speed a bit and whip until meringue is glossy, and stiff peaks form when the whisk is lifted, 4 to 5 minutes.

4 Pipe or spoon the meringue into 8-10 large round mounds that are 3 inches wide on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper or a silicon liner. With the back of a spoon, create an indentation in the middle of the mound for holding the filling once meringue is baked.

5 Bake: Place baking sheet in the 275°F oven. Reduce oven temperature to 250°F. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the meringues are crisp, dry to the touch on the outside, and white -- not tan-colored or cracked. The interiors should have a marshmallow-like consistency.

Check on meringues at least once during the baking time. If they appear to be taking on color or cracking, reduce temperature 25 degrees, and turn pan around.

6 Cool: Gently lift from the baking sheet and cool on a wire rack. Will keep in a tightly sealed container at room temperature, or individually wrapped, for up to a week if your house is not humid.

Sauce or Filling Directions

If you want to make a berry sauce, heat a couple pints of fresh or frozen berries in a medium saucepan with about a quarter cup of sugar. Heat on medium heat, stirring once or twice, for about 5 to 10 minutes, depending on how much the berries are falling aprt. Remove from heat and let cool.

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I have never had any success with meringue. I followed the instructions religiously and got the ‘cream’ looking right but in the baking, it all flopped. I made individual ones, they did colour and were non-sticky to the touch on the outside but soft on the inside – so soft that they would not come off the paper. I think the trick is, as some Kiwis said, to leave it in the oven with the oven off. Sooooo disappointed. I did turn the oven down when they started to colour and that helped a little. What did I do wrong?

Also, can one leave the cream sitting out if there are two batches of baking to be done?

I just made this recipe this weekend. I have 7 chickens and a surplus of eggs. The recipe was fabulous, although I did modify slightly by adding 3 T Dutch processed cocoa powder to the sugar prior to blending it in. This made a fantastic dark rich chocolate Pavlova that I then topped with raspberries fresh from my garden.

I made these last night but they burnt :( I realised that I had the oven too high (forgot to turn down before putting in the oven). Obviously, I will turn oven down next time, but I wondered if the fact I’m using a gas oven makes any difference?

I made ‘pav’ for the first time last night, and in my excitement (haste?) I actually forgot the vinegar and vanilla! Didn’t realize it ’til the pavs were in the oven. Decided to go ahead anyway and take my chances. My guests were truly impressed and loved them. I could have kept my mouth shut, but admitted to the mistake, which surprised everyone as they insisted no one would have ever guessed anything was missing, given how delicious they were! I would have to agree. :-)

What a forgiving dessert! Definitely a keeper and something I’ll make again. (And I agree…they eat this on a regular basis in my heaven too! Hah!)

I’m going to make a pavlova for a class assignment and I only have a 40 minute time limit, is there anything i can do to speed up the process?

Hello Karen,

If you make the Pavlovas ultra tiny they will bake faster but rushing the beating of the whites, using cold egg whites or raising the oven temperature will adversely affect the end result. Pavlovas are meant to have a squishy center. It will take a lot of finesse to make them ultra small and still come out with this as your result. ~ Shuna

My pavlova went a brown colour – still tasted ok but does anyone know why this happened? I used 4 large egg whites, 1 cup of sugar, pinch of salt and a teaspoon of white wine vinegar. The eggs werent quite room temperature – would this have been why it went a strange brown colour?

The brown indicates that the oven got too hot and the sugar in the pavlova began to caramelize. Some people’s ovens run hot, some cold, so next time, drop the temp by 25°F if you use the same oven. ~Elise

I would like to make this recipe for my daughter’s birthday party. She is having a fairy theme and I want to make tiny sweets, so I am interested in individual pavlovas. Any hints on how long to cook them? I realize they will dry out, but this is a special occasion. I’ll make the large size another day for the rest of us. Thanks!

I made this for the 1st time today..OH MY…it turned out beautifully and is amazing…a friend from New Zealand gave me his family recipe…only slightly different from the one above but I used yer tips on mixing it together..Thanks ever so much…My family has a new favorite and I have a special recipe to pass down to my daughter…TL from Texas

This recipe did well, except for the time to cook. My pav’s exterior was still kind of rubbery and not crisp at the 6o minute mark at 250o. Any help?

Hello Virginia,You’re Pavlova sounds like it needs a bit more time, perhaps at an even lower temperature. Suffice to say there is no way to write a recipe for all ovens everywhere. Fell free to take the liberties with time and temperature that bring you the best results. ~ Shuna

I was making this the other day for a friend’s birthday. As a whole cake. In the middle of making it, I realized I didn’t have enough white sugar, and no time to go to the market. So for the meringue I used 1/2 white sugar and 1/2 brown sugar, which I ground fine in a mini food processor. I also used just brown sugar for the whipped cream. It came out with a delightfully nutty taste, which was a real surprise.

It doesn’t sound to me like anything is wrong. Your description of your Pavlova sounds like it came out fine. It is a meringue, not a cake, so it’s not supposed to be cut and sliced into wedges; it’s supposed to be topped with wet foods such as sorbet, ice cream, whipped cream, fruit, etc. so that the moisture from these items changes the mouthfeel and consistency of the Pavlova.

If you want it to be more like a cake, then you are looking for DACQUOISE. Take a recipe for this and increase the flour by 15-25% and you will get something made primarily of egg whites, but slice-able.

Hi. I just finished making my second large sized pavlova cake for a baking contest today. But again I am experiencing the same problem. When the timer goes off everything looks good and wonderful. But then as it is cooling, the marshmallow-y inside starts pulling away from the crust so when I go to cut it, its just sorta crumbles apart. What am I doing wrong? I got the recipe from the internet and I compared it with other recipes and they all use the same ingredients. HELP!

I’m a sixteen year old who only just recently got back from a trip to Australia with a group of friends. I’ll tell you, we went to a restaurant (somewhere in the Outback) that had this as the dessert and I INSTANTLY fell in love.

Ever since I returned home, I’ve been absolutely dying to share this wonderful dessert with my friends and family. Thanks to you…they all now know the amazing delight I felt when I first tried pavlova. Thanks sooo much!

HelloI have just taken my povlova out of the oven and they look great. I was surprised how much the grew. I will be serving them at a dinner party tommorow and I am hoping to impress my guests. I looked for raspberries at the local market and the selection was not the best so I have decided to use strawberries, mango, kewi, and black berries. I am planning on making the sause with the berries and then once it is done to add the mango and kewi in hope that they will retain their wonderfull colours. I would just like to let you know how fantastic it is to finally find a recipie that is wheat and dairy free that is also satisfing and light on the waist line. If you have anyother recipie idea’s that are wheat and cow dairy free that would be great. I have a allergy to both of these things and have had a hard time to find alternative recipie ideas. Please let me know if you have any inspiring ideas.Susan Ryder of Toronto, Ontario, Canada

I found this to be such an incredibly easy thing to make that I made it twice in two days for my own family and then for Easter for the extended family. Everybody loved it!!! Very light and satisfying after a large meal.

The Easter cookie version comes with a story to tell while making it. It’s actually quite evocative, especially the first time. I don’t remember the whole thing, but I do remember the first step. You put the pecans in the plastic bag and then have the children take turns beating the bejeebers out of them in order to break them up adequately. Then you say, “That’s what the soldiers did to Jesus the night before he was crucified”. Shook my kids fairly thoroughly.

Have fun making the Pavlova! It’s wonderful, even if it does get overcooked.

This was amazing! We celebrated a Passover meal with guests tonight and I served pavlovas and they were a big hit! Thank you so much for yet another great recipe and another great set of directions and pictures – your site is now one of the first places I look to try new tasty meals!

Hi Elise, I just discovered this site from a link from this blog (http://sweet-sins.blogspot.com/). I’ve notice that you’ve posted many great recipes that I would like to try – thanks for sharing. And I also enjoy the photos. Thanks also to Suna for all the useful tips for working with egg white. I made choc pavlova for the first time this year for an Australia Day (Jan) party I had at my place. I have to say that it was simpler than I though (and this is my first time working with just egg whites) so long as you work with room temperature egg whites. And it looked so elegant, so it impresses everyone at the party. I wanted to serve it with whipped cream and rasberries, but had to use strawberries instead because the rasberries at the market didn’t look too good. As “autumnal New Zealand” mentioned above, Pavlovas downunder tends to have a mashmallow centre that is so addictive. As for the leftover egg yolks, I made a rich shortcrust pasty (that’s easily frozen and used another time) and also custard. – Nora

I hope to have the chance to blog about this in the coming days, but if I don’t, I can’t pass up the opportunity to throw in my two cents about what a fantastic Passover dessert this stands to be. In my house, we always have some format of flourless chocolate cake, but when looking for a second, lighter and chocolate-free dessert, I couldn’t imagine anything better than this. The trick is to replace the cornstarch (verboten) with potato starch. (Thank you Shuna for emailing with me about this.) The whipped cream can be omitted for a paerve dessert.

My absolutely favorite go-to raspberry sauce comes from a bag of frozen raspberries which are pureed, pressed through a mesh strainer to remove the seeds, and then heated with a few tablespoons of sugar until dissolved. Perfect dessert sauce, even better in the following days over plain yogurt.

I feel your pain. The Pavlova is a very interesting meringue in that the center is soft, pillowy, almost like a supple marshmallow, and the exterior is crunchy but it’s thin, giving way to something that melts in your mouth.

Trust me when I say that store bought is not the same.

One of the tricks is to really start with a big enough meringue– this way they don’t dry out so much. The small ones are meant to be crunchy through and through, but not the Pavlova.

Made it last night and I just wanted to let you know it came out perfectly… The pavlova was heavenly and my dinner guests were awestruck. It wasn’t very difficult and will definitely make this again. Thanks Elise!

This is a great question! The answer is that, in reality, you don’t “need” any of these acids, but yes, substitututions can be made. Cream of Tartar tends to be a little more invisible, taste-wise, than vinegar, though, so be aware in terms of what your end result is going to be.

Vladimir,

I think you mean cornstarch, right? You may substitute arrowroot powder or potato starch, although not potato flour, as that is a different thing altogether. I’m sorry to say I’m not as familiar with baked good raw ingredients in Europe, although I know a bit about what one can find in London as I lived there years ago.

Is the vinegar substitute for cream of tartar applicable for all meringues or just here? I just recently learned about the lemon juice/milk substitution for buttermilk and am always interested to learn more tricks.

Thank you for your alternative to the shell. But the reason the shell works so well is because the edge of a broken egg shell is sharp and it will lift out all of the yolk.

About the Salmonella– it’s true that this deadly bacteria, if it’s on the egg at all, will be on the outside of the shell. Unfortunately if it is there, cracking the egg at all will insure that it will come into contact with the whites.

In The United States, unless your eggs come from your own back yard or very local farm, all eggs are “candled,” a “light pasteurization process” which is supposed to kill Salmonella.

Also, these egg whites are cooked/baked. If Salmonella was present it won’t be once you’ve taken the meringues out of the oven.

Whenever I make chocolate mousse, wherein the egg whites are not cooked, I emply a “Swiss meringue” so that I do heat the egg whites to a hot enough temperature to rid them of any harmful bacteria.

While making a pav can be a bit intimidating, don’t let that prevent you from trying this incredibly flexible dessert. If you take your time and follow the instructions with care you’ll be rewarded with a treat.

I personally prefer a single large pavlova rather than individual serves – I find it’s much more visually satisfying and is delightfully messy to serve at the table in front of your guests!

Nigella Lawson has a terrific chocolate pav recipe (in “Forever Summer” I think). It may not meet with the approval of purists, but I can’t think of a better way to eat whipped creamed and freshly picked raspberries.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees (this is important – don’t wait until you’re half done with the recipe!)

Place 1 cup of whole pecans in zipper baggie and beat them with a wooden spoon to break into small pieces. Put 1 tsp vinegar into mixing bowl. Add 3 egg whites to vinegar. Put Salt into the bowl. Add 1 cup sugarBeat with a mixer on high speed for 12 to 15 minutes until stiff peaks are formedFold in the broken nuts. Drop by teaspoons onto a wax paper covered cookie sheetPut the cookie sheet in the oven, close the door and turn the oven OFF.

GO TO BED!

On Easter morning, open the oven and give everyone a cookie. Notice the cracked surface and take a bite. The cookies are hollow!

I do think meringue is a bit tricky, but both Elise and I have worked hard to set down every last detail in the instructions portion. We are both very much hoping that by reading and seeing the photos everyone will indeed attempt this sumptuous creation!

Please do stop by again if you do in fact make them. Of course I hope you do.

Here in Brazil we call the plain baked meringue dumplings (without the topping and fruit) SUSPIROS, which means “sighs” in English. They are eaten out of the bag (if industrialized) and usually are smaller in size than the ones pictured in this recipe (you can pop’em whole into your mouth and let them dissolve slowly…).It is like buying Oreo cookies: found in supermarkets, grocery stores, street vendors.We also make a dessert called “Merengue”, with strawberries and whipped cream, that is much like strawberry short cake – substitute the short cake for suspiros and voilà… Congrats on the great blog. I’ve used many of your recipes!

It is funny that in Russia nobody would call this dessert Pavlova. Russians like it, make it quite often, but call it Bizet (yes, just like George Bizet, a French composer.)Elise, thank you for the blog. i found it by chance while searching for some recipe on the web, but from that day on it’s been in my live bookmarks. I heard your talk on the radio — congrats! If you’d like to feature some Russian recipe, just let me know! :-)

This reminds me of a dessert I had at a restaurant in the Vosges du Nord: Coupe Vosges. It was 2 meringues, side-by-side, with whipped cream in the middle and topped with sweetened raspberries splashed with raspberry eau de vie.

This reminds me of something we made growing up around Easter… We called them Resurrection cookies, I’m not sure if they had another name. Chopped pecans were added to the meringue base, and they were left in the preheated oven overnight. We were usually too impatient and baked a few batches first :)